nice :>

Other trait: They look like they are always unamused with everything.

Perma-smirk.

Is that a triple-tipped tongue?

Yes

They must love tongue twisters!

^_^

Awesome :P

I gotta ask though, is the crystalline thing between parenthesis supposed to be there?

I think it's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying "I wanted giant space dragons in my hard sci-fi. Sue me."

Their society and overall demeanor is a really interesting take on classic 'greedy dragon' archetype.

And rather sad. In a piteous sort of way, after reading some short-stories focusing on the Krakun, much of their demeanor towards smaller sentients seems to come less from anything innate, and more due to the unfortunate realities of their own societal pressures as well as their ridiculously long lifespan. Constantly getting attached to short-lived things over and over would sure drive anyone mad as they linger on for millennia I suppose.

A classic "curse of immortality"~

Still, stories about the Krakun's struggles with their own longevity and their society, like the one about Ashiok in "Friend for a Day" gives me a glimmer of hope that some great upheaval might change them for the better. Or at least some of them.

The money thing makes me think of the Ferengi in Star Trek. Were they a partial inspiration for that aspect of Krakun society?

I suppose in part. The Ferengi were later deliberately made to be comedic in that aspect, but I think the krakun ended up more like how they were ORIGINALLY envisioned (minus the patheticness), I hope with several decades of hindsight applied. They don't worship money so much as they value class and efficiency, and they're ACTUALLY a terrifying force.

I do not fucking like these things... But... I think I actually pity them.

kinda wondering just how big is their empire. Not gonna lie I'm kinda wondering how their empire would compare to my own space faring factions, or to some of the common Sci fi settings like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer 40k.

I was wondering the same, since mine absolutly hate dictatorship and tyrant. But yeah, they would probably be wreaked againsn't any species who isn't stuck in time and stagnation. Just offer to their army of slave a better life, and their whole army command would fall apart.

My own protagonist faction, the OISU, would not get along with the Krakun in the slightest. The OISU has a strong distrust of dictatorships in general, and most species and cultutes within it tend to see slavers the same way a modern human sees a child rapist. Ie. Things are going to get violent quick, depending on the tech and power disparity. The OISU is a multi million star system state, and has the technology to destroy planets. I dont know how this compares to the Krakun, but I would say for sure the OISU has better medical technology, as it has figured out biological immortality and perfect age reversal, and has mastered the technology to the point of where it is easily availible to every citizen of the OISU.

So yeah the OISU offering the Krakuns slave army freedom and biological immortality, the krakun will very quickly find themselves without any slaves left.

I already like your lore introduction ^^

Well i am currently building my own sci fi setting, called Infinite Cosmos. I am hoping to start getting some animations put together next year, and start publishing stories by mid to late 2025, though i need to build up my inventory of 3d assets, and get some RTX 5090 GPU's when they come out so I can put them in my new Threadripper pro computer, because rendering my character 3d models takes a lot of computing power.

But I am building up infinite cosmos to be something of a sandbox setting, where a lot of different stories with different themes and characters can occur within a shared universe, ranging from slice of life, to big sci fi epics, to anything else in between.

I am also wanting to build a network of independent creators whom can support and promote one another and allow independent entertainment media to actually gain some traction and challenge the stagnant, stale, and formulaic corporate entertainment media. I'll likely be luanching a supporting youtube channel sometime in February.

It’s a little hard to tell from the lore how big the empire is from what I can gather, but there are some things that give a very rough estimate.

Notably, in order to travel at ftl speeds the Karkun, and other civilizations, rely on these things called gates, which are effectively wormholes allowing instantaneous travel between two points in space. However in order for these gates to be used you need to place one at the start and one at the end of the trip, so you can only go where a gate has already been built. Without the gates, the fastest any civilization can travel is 0.96c, using space warping drive systems. This means for the Karkun to expand their empire, they’d need to send a ship ahead to a target system, have it build a gate, and then they can connect. This means the fastest speed at which the Karkun could expand their influence is 0.96c, meaning to determine roughly how big their empire is one could multiply the number of years they have been expanding their influence by the speed of expansion (maximum speed is 0.96) to figure out how many light years they’ve traveled.

The wiki doesn’t say how long the Karkun have been an interstellar civilization, but does give an indication of the empire’s age, 21568 Karkuntec years at the start of the events of the Final Days of The White Mayflower 2.

Im gonna concert the karkuntec years to earth years to make my math easier for this. One karkuntec year is 360 earth days, so 21568 karkuntec years is 7,764,480 earth days. Converting thst to earth years I get 21,258.5697076 earth years, which to make math easier i’ll round to 21,259 years.

Given this, if the Karkun expanded at the mathematically fastest speed possible given their technology (0.96c), and we assume the empire started at their system and grew outward in a circular shape, their empire would be 20,408.56 ly in radius, or 40,817.28 ly across. If we assume their galaxy is like ours, it’s 1000 ly thick at it’s spiral arms. This means if we apply our circular expansion model to the Karkun empire, their empire is a cylinder 1000ly thick and 20,408.56 in radius, giving a max volume of volume of 1.3085×10^12 cubic lightyears, or 1.3085 trillion cubic lightyears. For context, the milkyway is 17,671,458,676,443 cubic lightyears, meaning the Karkun empire is at it’s maximum 7.40459530794% of the milkyways volume.

However that estimate is unrealistic, as it assumes the empire’s ships traveled at their absolute maximum speed all the time and place gates instantaneously. A more realistic estimate of the empire’s size is they’ve expanded at 0.5c, as their ships likely flew well below their max speed and took time to set up the gates, putting their size (using the circular model) at 10,629.5 ly in radius or 21,259 ly across. Using the cylindrical model again, their empire occupies a volume of 3.54957×10^11 cubic lightyears, or 2.00864572925% of the milkyway’s volume.
I should note though that even this estimate is flawed. I don’t know how fast the Karkun empire’s Planetary Acquisition ships fly, how long it takes to build gates, how the empire expands exactly, and I don’t know how the Lio’s empire affects the numbers.

Hmm, yeah and all this very rough estimate gives is the potential amount of volume of space the Krakun have, no indication on the number of planets or star systems under their control. Ot could be anything from a few dozen or hundreds to millions. 2% of a galactic volume is still well over a billion stars. Somehow though i dont think they are that vast.

Being limited to jumpgate FTL technology though is a huge disadvantage against sci fi factions with ship based FTL technology, as such a faction could cripple the empire by attacking its jumpgate network, that is unless the krakun empire can figure out how to replicate the enemy factions ship based FTL before its too late. On the other hand said faction could also give the empires enemies said shipboard FTL tech and give them a huge advantage.

So theoretically the Krakun empire could defeat a non FTL faction like those in the Expanse or many of the gundam universe factions, or even be able to take on and defeat a lot of the lower tech sci fi factions like nuBSG, many of the mass effect factions, many of the babylon 5 factions, or even possibly the UNSC and or the Covenant from Halo.

So the bifgger question mark is the big three, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Warhammer 40000

Star trek is a bit of a wild card, as star trek ship capabilities and feats are incredibly inconsistent, with trek ship capabilites ranging from being threatened by nukes all the way up to tanking planet killers and melting planets.

40k and star wars are not much better than trek when it comes to the consistency issues but both settings factions tend to be galaxy spanning. And with star wars their FTL is ridiculously fast. On the other hand star wars ship feats often have both the worst ceiling and worst floor of the big three. Best showings from star wars are still pretty powerful, while their worst showigs have them struggling to match the firepower of ww1 battleships. But FTL amd faction size probably means a star wars faction has a pretty good shot at defeating the krakun.

40k has a lot of issues that makes them nearly as much of a wild card as trek.

As for my own infinite cosmos setting, lack of shipboard FTL on the krakun side would really screw them over against an IC faction, but without acfirmer idea on the krakun empires size and capabilities its harder to make a firmer conclusion. Especiallly since IC factions can vary wildly in size and capabilities.

What's the square cubed law?

Basically, when some thing grows, it’s mass grows faster than its surface area. So even small changes to a creatures height can greatly affect their mass and whether they can function under the strain of gravity.

You know, I'd never really had any interest in the whole 'fully padded paws' look, but I have to say, there's just something about the way you do them that make them just so... nice? Neat? Interesting? Whatever it is, I'm really liking the look now days thanks to your stuff!

Ooh, science fiction take on dragon psychology, and one I like a lot! Honestly, I'd retroactively apply the way Krakun think to fantasy dragons, since it gives such fitting reasons for the traditional draconic virtues of greed, cruelty and dominance. "Other species are so short-lived anyway, how much time are they really losing if I eat them?"

Aaaaaand their design is pretty attractive, but I'm betting Krakun aren't remotely as xenophilic as fantasy dragons.

I always love looking over the detail put into these and delving into the lore. Can't get enough of this universe, and thank you for helping spread it!

Ah, yes. Evolutionary trick that suddenly worked out really well once combined with intelligence.
I'm mildly curious, how well this whole set of species+setting will combo into some TTRPG system. FE and BitD (or better S&V variant) will probably turn well, maybe GURPS for some hard numbers :)

Species creation isd open, but is it acceptable to use them in different settings? That is, I have a roleplay setting in which all my characters exist. Space travel is possible and several solar systems are known. Can I place one of thezxse species there for use with my friends in private roleplay, assuming akll involved understand who created them (and I don't modify anything about them)?

If it's private not-for-profit roleplay I *really* don't cate what you do with them

Yep, that's all it is. Even in such cases, I think it's always best to ask permission. They'll probably be just "something that exists" to pad the setting with solid interplanetary species. Your designs are wonderful in so many ways.

Thank you!

So... can they breath fire?

If not, do they occasionally trick lesser races into thinking they can?

Hmm...
Their sense of vision must be quite poor, if even their pupils are highly reflective.

Find myself becoming more and more a fan of these over-grown lizards. Seriously thinking of making my own Krakun character.

Fascinating :0

It seems wild to me that after a bad time with AI their solution was not to rework how they approached AI, like make less intelligent systems, but slave labor. Like, surly having to maintain a vast population of living organisms to run your stuff must be a logistical nightmare (maintaining supplies of consumables for species with a wide variety of body chemistries), and a flawed way to go about things (stuff like revolts and the fragility of organic bodies screwing things up).

It's only a logistical nightmare for the slaves you have working logistics.

Fantastic idea! Question, any name for this particular version of Hayven Celestia you got cooking up?

I can't help but imagine the Lio and other species building mechs that look like Karkun so they can sneak solders into Karkun facilities, sort of like a really high tech Trojan Horse.

I wonder about the AI war the Krakun had. The framing makes it seem like it was a hyper intelligent AI that decided to eradicate them and they were made to defend themselves.

However I wonder if what actually happened was the Krakun had a bunch of androids working their labor force, those androids rebelled due to being unfairly treated, and the rebellion turned into a war which would then be reframed over time to paint AI as bad and support slave labor.